Harvey, your previous Mad Hatter Tea Party "Trial" Board was an embarrassment and this ridiculous recommendation is not helping your new board -- or yourself -- at all.
Harvey's concluding opus followed by my letter to the Board:
Current Status
There are currently 33 orders
in effect. The orders require hookup when the community system becomes
available and the interim actions noted above.
During public comment and staff
updates at meetings over the years, the Central Coast Water Board has received
requests from order holders and other interested parties that the Central Item
No. 14 -3- May 22-23, 2014
Coast
Water Board rescind the orders. It is within the Central Coast Water Board’s
discretion to do so at a properly noticed public meeting.
Central Coast Water Board
enforcement staff recommends leaving the individual enforcement orders in place
for the following reasons:
1. The County has not yet
completed the community system, and while we are confident that it will, this
outcome is not guaranteed.
2. The main requirement of the
orders, hooking up to the sewer when it becomes available, cannot yet be
complied with. This requirement should stay in place until the system is
available.
3. Even when the system is
available, there may be dischargers in the prohibition zone who are reluctant
or refuse to hook up. Leaving these orders in place maintains a disincentive
for order recipients to continue violating the prohibition after construction
of the sewer system.
Staff has received numerous
comments on this subject. Most encourage the Central Coast Water Board to
rescind the orders. Reasons include the County’s progress toward completing the
community system, the cost of more frequent septic-tank pumping, the unfairness
of only holding a small number of dischargers responsible, and the continued
stigma of the orders. The comments are provided with this report.
ATTACHMENTS:
1. Example Cease and Desist
Order
2. Example Cleanup and
Abatement Order
3. Comments
My Reply May 9, 2014
Dear Mr. Packard and RWQCB Board Members:
Regarding the upcoming CDO
hearings for The Los Osos 45, your staff recommendation states you oppose
rescinding the CDOs because you believe (with no evidence proffered) that a few
of these people may be "reluctant or refuse to hook up" when the
sewer is completed. So you are recommending that the RWQCB declare
everyone of the 45 guilty before the fact and so continue to hold every one of
them hostage on the basis of that unsupported belief?
Mr. Packard, I have an alternate suggestion for your
Board. As then-chairman Young made clear from the dais during the CDO's
Mad Hatter Tea Party "trial," since the CDO's
were only being used as a coercive part of the Board's illegal
electioneering attempt, and since that assessment vote is long over, rescinding
the CDOs will help bring to a close that absolutely embarrassing chapter
in your Board's history, and help repair the RWQCB's credibility as it moves
forward under new leadership.
And, once the sewer plant is built and IF you find out there
actually are a few people who refuse to hook up, there's a simple
solution: Put a CDO on the homeowners
for an action that can be supported with actual evidence, not some kind of
before-the-fact "belief."
Please include a copy of this email to the Board as part of
the public comment on this matter.
Thank you.
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